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In this Something to Think About episode, Jeff brings a bit of awareness to the data usage while updating apps.
Updating apps can significantly impact your data usage, especially if you’re on a limited plan. Regular updates, sometimes over 500MB per app, can quickly add up. While updates can improve security and features, it’s worth considering whether automatic updates are right for you. Adjusting iPhone settings to manually update apps or restricting updates to Wi-Fi can save data and storage. Keep an eye on your app sizes and decide what’s best for your needs. Something to think about!
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Full Transcript:
Jeff: Welcome to Blind Abilities. I’m Jeff Thompson. Updating apps and data usage. Does having too many apps on your iPhone matter? Well, if you update your apps regularly, let’s say once a week, I think it does matter. And the size of the apps do matter when you’re considering how much storage you have available. So I’m going to open up my App Store app on my iPhone
Samantha: app store, 50 updates available.
Jeff: Then I go over to my account and single finger double tap.
Samantha: My account, 50 updates available, button, account heading.
Jeff: And down below you’ll see available updates if you have any apps that are available to update, and it will tell you how many there are.
Samantha: available Updates Heading. Update all 50, button.
Jeff: But if you actually go down and see what size these are, how much data is this going to be pulling through your Wi-Fi? Let’s take a look at a couple of the apps. When you’re swiping through the list of the apps, the first swipe will give you the name, the version number, and the size of the app. The second swipe will ask you to update, and the third swipe will tell you somewhat what new features or updates are being made.
Samantha: Walmart Shopping and Savings version 25 .0.1. 605.5 MB button. Update button. Thank you for using the Walmart app. We’ve made a few enhancements to provide a seamless experience so you can save time and money.
Jeff: So I’m going to read to you some of the apps that I’ve found are quite large. And then I’m going to show you some that were surprisingly kind of small. Walmart 605MB. The Gmail app from Google, 597MB. The slack app that’s at 407MB. Uber 516MB. Google home 507MB. Facebook app 358MB Microsoft Word 288MB. And then there’s some other ones, like ChatGPT 75MB. Pixy bot bought 26MB Hulu app, 74MB. Peacock 108MB and Bookshare at 41MB. So, updating on a weekly basis, if you take one of the 500 plus megabytes one on a weekly basis, that’s two gigabytes a month you’re going to be doing just for that one app. And presently I have 50 apps that want to update, and if I just tap on update all, I really don’t want to know how large a number that would be in megabytes, Gigabytes, yeah.
But the thing is, do they really need to update weekly? I mean, if I don’t even use my Facebook app for a week and they update again, it just replaces that one there. So when I do finally do it, say at the end of the month and any particular app may have released an update four times, it’s still going to be only 500 plus megabytes. Instead of me updating it every week where it’s going to cost me two gigabytes of data. Follow that?
So maybe at the end of the month when you check up on your data usage, if you’re pressing up against your limit, then having to pay for more data. You might decide not to. And wait till the beginning of the month to update selective apps. And just follow it once in a while. But if you have unlimited data. And you have unlimited storage on your phone, this isn’t a problem for you. This isn’t for you. But not all of us have that luxury. So if you’re limited on your data usage, watch what you’re updating and how often you’re updating it. It’s nice to update because there could be some security involved, there could be some features involved, but pick and choose and see what is best for you.
I just wanted to bring this awareness to you that every time those apps are updating, it’s chink, chink, chink clicking away at your data. So hopefully you’re at the helm. You’re deciding when to update. Some people set it to automatically update all the time. You know you can change that too if you don’t want it to update all the time, which is a nice thing not to, because if you hear that app broke, you don’t want to update it. You don’t. Wait till they fix it so you can choose when to update it.
So on your iPhone, go to Settings.
Samantha: Settings.
Jeff: Single Finger double tap.
Samantha: Settings Heading.
Jeff: Go all the way down or do a four finger single tap near the bottom and you’ll end up at apps.
Samantha: Apps button.
Jeff: single Finger double tap.
Samantha: Selected.
Jeff: And then swipe on down and you’ll come to App Store. It’s alphabetical order, so it’s not that far down.
Samantha: App store, button.
Jeff: And single finger double tap. And here you’re going to have a list of options that you can do.
Samantha: Cellular data, switch button on.
Jeff: One of the most important ones I think is, are you automatically updating your apps or are you pulling the trigger when to do it? I have that set to no, let me do it.
Samantha: App downloads automatically install free and paid apps purchased on other devices. Switch button off.
App updates. Automatically install new app updates. Switch button off.
In app content. Automatically run apps in the background to download content before you first launch them. Switch button on.
Cellular data heading.
Jeff: Are you doing it over cellular? You can say no, or you can say yes and set a size limit for what size apps the Appstore will download over cellular.
Samantha: Automatic downloads switch button off.
App downloads. Ask if over 200 MB button only. Allow apps under 200 MB to download automatically using cellular data.
Jeff: So go down this list and check out what options you have set up, and you can set it to offload an app. Say you’re not using an app for 6 or 7 months or whatever. It’ll offload it, meaning that it won’t take as much space on your phone. And when you want it back, just single finger double tap it. It will then download the essential data and there you go.
Samantha: Offload unused apps. Switch button on.
Automatically remove unused apps, but keep all documents and data. Reinstalling the app will place back your data. If the app is still available in the App Store.
Jeff: It’s kind of a neat way to clean up your phone, especially if you have hundreds of apps on there and you’re not using them. It’ll kind of like, hey, I don’t even use this app anymore, so maybe you should just get rid of it. Some things are hard to part with. So check it out. How much data are you using every time you’re updating your apps from the App Store?Something to think about.
All right. Thanks for listening. And until next time. Bye bye.
For more podcasts with a Blindness Perspective, check us out on the web at Blind Abilities. On Twitter, Blind Abilities, and download the free Blind Abilities app from the App Store. That’s two words, Blind Abilities. And if you want to leave some feedback, give us some suggestions. Give us a call at (612) 367-6093. We’d love to hear from you. I want to thank you for listening. And until next time, bye-bye.
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